by Paul Theroux
He gave me an odd look and excused himself, taking his little valise of salad to the drinking fountain to wash it.
'We always wash our food before we eat.'
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I said, 'Raccoons do that!'
It was meant as encouragement, but I could see I was not doing at all well.
Back at the house, Floyd dug a present out of his bag. You sat on it, this fiber mat. 'One of your miracle fibers?' I said. 'Tell me more!' But he fell silent. He demurred when I mentioned tennis, and at my suggestion of an afternoon of recreational shopping he grunted. He said, 'We normally sleep in the afternoon.' Again I was a bit startled by the plural pronoun and glanced around, half expecting to see another dusky islander. But no - Floyd's was the brotherly folk 'we' of the native, affirming the cultural freemasonry of all Polynesia. And it had clearly got into his bones. He had acquired an almost catlike capacity for slumber. He lay for hours in the lawn hammock, swinging like a side of beef, and at sundown entered the house yawning and complaining of the cold. It was my turn to laugh: the thermometer on the deck showed eighty-one degrees.
'I'll bet you wish you were at Trader Vic's,' I said over the cassoulet, trying to avert my ethnocentric gaze as Floyd nibbled the beans he seized with his fingers. He turned my Provencal cuisine into a sort of astronaut's pellet meal.
He belched hugely, and guessing that this was a ritual rumble of Samoan gratitude, I thanked him.
'Ironic, isn't it?' I said. 'You seem to have managed marvelously out there in the Pacific, taking life pretty much as you found it. And I can't help thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson, who went to Samoa with his sofas, his tartans, his ottoman, and every bagpipe and ormolu clock from Edinburgh in his luggage.'
'How do you know that?' he asked.
'Vassar,' I said. 'There wasn't any need for Stevenson to join a Samoan family. Besides his wife and his stepson, there were his stepdaughter and her husband. His wife was a divorcee, but she was from California, which explains everything. Oh, he brought his aged mother out, too. She never stopped starching her bonnets, so they say.'
'Tusitala,' said Floyd.
'Come again?'
'That was his title. "Teller of tales." He read his stories to the Samoans.'
'I'd love to know what they made of "Weir of Hermiston."' It
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was clear from Floyd's expression that he had never heard of the novel.
He said gamely, 'I didn't finish it.'
'That's not surprising - neither did Stevenson. Do much reading, Floyd?'
'Not a lot. We don't have electricity, and reading by candlelight is really tough.'
'"Hermiston" was written by candlelight. In Samoa. It would be an act of the greatest homage to the author to read it that way.'
'I figured it was pointless to read about Samoa if you live there.'
'All the more reason to read it, since it's set in eighteenth-century Scotland.'
'And he was a palagi.'
'Don't be obscure, Floyd.'
'A white man.'
Only in the sense that Pushkin was an octoroon and Othello a soul brother, I thought, but I resisted challenging Floyd. Indeed, his saturation in the culture had made him indifferent to the bizarre. I discovered this when I drew him out. What was the food like after it was shoveled from beneath the hot stones? On Floyd's report it was uninspired: roots, leaves, and meat, sweated together in this subterranean sauna. What kind of meat? Oh, all kinds; and with the greatest casualness he let it drop that just a week before, he had eaten a flying fox.
'On the wing?' I asked.
'They're actually bats,' he said. 'But they call them-'
'Do you mean to tell me that you have eaten a bat?'
'You act as if it's an endangered species,' he said.
'I should think Samoans are if that's part of their diet.'
'They're not bad. But they cook them whole, so they always have a strange expression on their faces when they're served.'
'Doesn't surprise me a bit. Turn up their noses, do they?'
'Sort of. You can see all their teeth. I mean, the bats'.'
'What a stitch!'
He smiled. 'You think that's interesting?'
'Floyd, it's matchless.'
Encouraged, he said, 'Get this - we use fish as fertilizer. Fish!'
'That's predictable enough,' I said, unimpressed. 'Not far from where you are now, simple folk put fresh fish on their vegetable gardens as fertilizer. Misguided? Maybe. Wasteful? Who knows?
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Such was the nature of subsistence farming on the Cape three hundred years ago. One thing, though - they knew how to preach a sermon. Your agriculturalist is so often a God-fearing man.'
This cued Floyd into an excursion on Samoan Christianity, which sounded to me thoroughly homespun and basic, full of a good-natured hypocrisy that took the place of tolerance.
I said, 'That would make them - what? Unitarians?'
Floyd belched again. I thanked him. He wiped his fingers on his shirtfront and said it was time for bed. He was not used to electric light: the glare was making him belch. 'Besides, we always go to bed at nine.'
The hammering some minutes later was Floyd rigging up the hammock in the spare room, where there was a perfectly serviceable double bed.
'We never do,' I called.
Floyd looked so dejected at breakfast, toying with his scrambled egg and sausage, that I asked him if it had gone cold. He shrugged. Everything was hunky-dory, he said in Samoan, and then translated it.
'What do you normally have for breakfast?'
'Taro.'
'Is it frightfully good for you?'
'It's a root,' he said.
'Imagine finding your roots in Samoa!' Seeing him darken, I added, 'Carry on, Floyd. I find it all fascinating. You're my window on the world.'
But Floyd shut his mouth and lapsed into silence. Later in the morning, seeing him sitting cross-legged in the parlor, I was put in mind of one of those big lugubrious animals that look so homesick behind the bars of American zoos. I knew I had to get him out of the house.
It was a mistake to take him to the supermarket, but this is hindsight; I had no way of anticipating his new fear of traffic, his horror of crowds, or the chilblains he claimed he got from air conditioning. The acres of packaged foods depressed him, and his reaction to the fresh-fruit department was extraordinary.
'One fifty-nine!' he jeered. 'In Samoa, you can get a dozen bananas for a penny. And look at that,' he said, handling a whiskery coconut. 'They want a buck for it!'
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'They're not exactly in season here on the Cape, Floyd.'
'I wouldn't pay a dollar for one of those.'
'I had no intention of doing so.'
'They're dangerous, coconuts,' he mused. 'They drop on your head. People have been known to be killed by them.'
'Not in Barnstable County,' I said, which was a pity, because I felt like aiming one at his head and calling it an act of God.
He hunched over a pyramid of oranges, examining them with distaste and saying that you could buy the whole lot for a quarter in a village market he knew somewhere in remote Savai'i. A tray of mangoes, each fruit the rich color of old meerschaum, had Floyd gasping with contempt: the label stuck to their skins said they were two dollars apiece, and he had never paid more than a nickel for one.
'These cost two cents,' he said, bruising a grapefruit with his thumb, 'and they literally give these away,' he went on, flinging a pineapple back onto its pile. But his disbelief was nothing compared to the disbelief of shoppers, who gawped at his lava-lava. Yet his indignation at the prices won these people over, and amid the crashing of carts I heard the odd shout of 'Right on!'
Eventually I hauled him away, and past the canned lychees ('They grow on trees in China, Floyd!') I became competitive. 'What about split peas?' I said, leading him down the aisles. 'Scallops? Indian pudding? Dreft? Clorox? What do you pay for dog biscuits? Look, b
e reasonable. What you gain on mangoes, you lose on maple syrup!'
We left empty-handed. Driving back, I noticed that Floyd had become even gloomier. Perhaps he realized that it was going to be a long summer. I certainly did.
'Anything wrong, Floyd?'
He groaned. He put his head in his hands. 'Aunt Freddy, I think I've got culture shock.'
isn't that something you get at the other end? I mean, when the phones don't work in Nigeria or you find ants in the marmalade or the grass hut leaks?'
'Our huts never leak.'
'Of course not,' I said. l And look, this is only a palagi talking, but I have the unmistakable feeling that you would be much happier among your own family, Floyd/
We both knew which family. Mercifully, he was gone the next
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day, leaving nothing behind but the faint aroma of coconut oil in the hammock. He never asked where I got the price of the Hyannis-Apia airfare. He accepted it with a sort of extortionate Third Worlder's wink, saying, That's very Samoan of you, Aunt Freddy.' But I'll get it back. Fortunately, there are ways of raising money at short notice around here.
Algebra
Ronald had threatened to move out before, but I always begged him not to. He knew he had power over me. He was one of those people who treats flattery as if it is mockery, and regards insult as a form of endearment. You couldn't talk to him. He refused to be praised, and if I called him 'Fanny' he only laughed. I suppose he knew that basically he was worthless, which led him to a kind of desperate boasting about his faults - he even boasted about his impotence. What Ronnie liked best was to get drunk on the cheap wine he called 'Parafino' and sprawl on the chaise and dig little hornets out of his nose and say what scum most people were. I knew he was bad for me and that I would have another breakdown if things went on like this much longer.
'God's been awful good to me,' he said once in the American accent he affected when he was drunk.
'That's blasphemy,' I said. 'You don't mean that. You'll go to Hell.'
'Wrong!' he shrieked. 'If you do mean it you'll go to Hell.'
When I met him he had just joined Howletts, the publisher. Quite early on, he began to sneer at the parties he sometimes took me to by boasting that he could go to one every day of the week. I thought he had a responsible position but afterwards, when I got to know the others, particularly Philippa and Roger, I came to realize that he was a rather insignificant person in the firm. I think this is why he seemed so embarrassed to have me along and took me so seldom. He implied that I wasn't attractive or intelligent enough for his publishing friends, and he would not let me near the real writers.
'This is Michael Insole, a friend,' he'd say, never letting on that we were living together in my flat. That sort of thing left me feeling incredibly depressed.
Then everything changed. I have not really analyzed it until now. It certainly wasn't an idea - nothing as solemn or calculated as that. It was more an impulse, a frenzy you might say, or a leap in
ALGEBRA
the dark. At one of the parties I was talking to Sir Charles Moon-man, the novelist and critic. 'And what do you do?' he asked me. At another time I might have said, 'I live with Ronald Brill,' but I was feeling so fed up with Ronnie I said, 'Basically, I'm a writer.'
'Do I know your work?' asked Sir Charles.
'No,' I said. It was the truth. I worked then, as I do now, at the Arcade Off-License near the Clapham South tube station, but living with Ronnie had made me want to go into writing.
Sir Charles found my prompt reply very funny, and then an odd thing happened. He relaxed and began to talk and talk. He was hugely old and had the downright manner and good health of a country doctor. He was reading Kingsley, he said, and squeezed air with his hands. He described the book, but it was nothing like any Kingsley I had ever read. He said, 'It has, don't you agree, just the right tone, an elasticity one associates with fiction -' I nodded and tried to add something of my own, but could not get a word in.
At this point, Virginia Byward, the novelist and traveler, ambled over and said hello.
'This is Mister Insole. He's a writer,' said Sir Charles. 'We've just been talking about Kinglake.'
Kinglake, not Kingsley. I was glad I had not said anything.
'Eothen? That Kinglake?' said Miss Byward.
'The Invasion of the Crimea. That Kinglake,' said Sir Charles.
'Well, I'll let you two get on with it,' said Miss Byward, laughing at her mistake. 'Very nice to have met you, Mister Insole.'
'She's so sweet,' said Sir Charles. 'And her reportage is devastating.' He clawed at his cuff. 'Bother. It's gone eight. I must rush -dinner engagement.'
'I'll be late for mine, as well,' I said. 'My hostess will tear a strip off me.' But I was not going anywhere.
'Such a bore, isn't it?' he said. 'We are both being called away. So unfortunate. I would much rather stand and chat about the Crimean War.'
'So would I!' I said. Then, I could think of nothing else to say, so I said, 'I am one of your most passionate fans.'
This was my leap in the dark. I had never read a word he had written. I suppose I looked terrified, but you would not have known it from the look on Sir Charles's face - pure joy. He removed his pipe from his mouth and stuffed his finger in the bowl.
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'I'm so glad.'
'I'm not joking,' I said. 'I find your work a real consolation. It genuinely engages me.'
'It is awfully good of you to say so.'
He sounded as if he meant it. More than that, he reacted as if no one had ever said these words to him before.
'We must meet for lunch one day.' He clenched the pipe stem in his teeth and beamed.
I said, 'How about dinner at my place? When you're free.' And Sir Charles Moonman, the eminent novelist and critic, said
to me, 'I am free most evenings.'
'Next week?'
'I can do Monday, or Tuesday, or-'
'Monday,' I said. I gave him my address and that was that. He clapped me on the shoulder in his bluff country doctor way, and I was still somewhat dazed when Ronald came over.
'What are you grinning about?'
'I've just invited Sir Charles Moonman for dinner.'
Ronald was horrified. 'You can't,' he said. 'I'll phone him in the morning and tell him it's off.'
'You'll do no such thing,' I said, raising my voice to a pitch that had Ronald shushing me and steering me to a corner.
'What are you going to give him?'
He had me there. I do a nice shepherd's pie, and Ronald had often praised my flan, but truly I had not given the menu much thought, and told him so.
'Shepherd's pie!' Ronald was saying as Virginia Byward sidled up to me.
'Hello, Mister Insole,' she said. She had remembered my name! 'Has Charles gone?'
Ronald was speechless.
'Charles had to be off,' I said. 'A dinner party - he was rather dreading it.'
Miss Byward was staring at Ronald.
I I know Mister Insole is a writer,' she said. 'But what do you do?' Ronald turned purple. He said, 'I sell worthless books/ and
marched away.
k I hope I didn't say anything to offend him/ said Miss Byward. 'Too bad about Charles. 1 was hoping he'd still be here. I meant to lock horns with him. 1
ALGEBRA
'If you're free on Monday, come along for dinner. Charles will be there.'
'I couldn't crash your dinner party.'
'Be my guest,' I said. 'It won't be fancy, but I think of myself as a good plain cook.'
'If you're sure it's no trouble-'
'I'd be honored,' I said, and then I could think of nothing to say except, 'I am one of your most passionate fans,' the statement that had gone down so well with Sir Charles. I was a bit embarrassed about saying it, because repeating it made it sound formulated and insincere. But it was my embarrassment that brought it off.
'Are you?' she said. She was clearly delighted.
'Your reportage is devastating.'
It was as easy as twisting a tap. I said nothing more. I simply listened to her talk, and finally she said, 'I've so enjoyed our little chat. See you Monday.'
Ronald was silent on the way home until we got to Kennington or The Oval. Then he said, 'Are you a writer?'
At Stockwell, I said, 'Are you a publisher?'
As the train drew into Clapham Common, he stood up and said, 'You're shameless.' He pushed past me and ran up the escalator.
That night Ronald slept on the chaise and the next day he moved out of the flat and out of my life.
I had not known how easy it would be to make the acquaintance of Sir Charles Moonman and Miss Byward. It had only been necessary to learn a new language, and it was one that Ronald either despised or did not know. When I went broody about Ronald's absence over the weekend I remembered the guests I'd invited for Monday and I cheered up.
But on Sunday I began to worry about the numbers. Three people did not seem much of a dinner party and I kept hearing myself saying, 'I like the intimate sort of party.' So I invited Mr Momma, too. Mr Momma, a Cypriot, was a house painter who lived in the top-floor flat. He never washed his milk bottles, so Ronald had named him 'Inky,' which was short for 'inconsiderate.' Mr Momma said he would do a salad.
On Monday I went to the library and got copies of Sir Charles's and Miss Byward's books. I was setting them out, arranging them on tables, when the phone rang. I must have been feeling a bit insecure
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still because I thought at once that it was either Sir Charles or Miss Byward who had rung to say they couldn't make it after all.
'Michael?'
It was Tanya Moult, one of Ronald's authors. I should say one of Ronald's victims, because he had strung her along for years. She was working on a book about pirates, women pirates, and Ronald had said it was just the ticket, a kind of robust woman's thing. That was very Ronald. He had other people doing books on cowboys -black cowboys; hair-dressers and cooks - all men; gay heroes, and cats in history. Tanya sent him chapters and at the same time she scraped a living writing stories for women's magazines under a pseudonym. Ronald was very possessive about Tanya, but perversely so: he kept me away from her while at the same time being nasty to her.